Monthly Archives: August 2016

So balancing kids and running a business is a brave move for any working parent. I am sure that there are more woman diving into this venture than men, and that is why I am under no illusion that we must all be mental! Or up for a challenge at the very least.

I am sure that your life is exactly the same, but the down time that I inevitably try to plan for the family always seem to get seductively swallowed up by some time worm. Before we know it our quiet weekend of doing nothing ( yes I do put doing nothing in the diary at least every six weeks) end up being busier than ever.

A few weekends ago was prime example, It was the BURYfields festival in Chesham, Bucks on the Saturday, a family day out and then the amazing Big Fish Little Fish on the Sunday where we set up our photo booth stand and sell a few of our clothes at the same time. Of course we had to fit in the usual stuff that weekends bring. Like swimming clubs and sleepovers, homework and birthday parties, you know the normal weekend activities and chores that are far to boring to even write about.

Anyway, so I had collected my son Fred from school on Friday and out he comes, grin the size of his head, with the school teddy bear or in our case the school teddy badger in his hand, utterly delighted that it was his time to bring home Barry. I know you are going to accuse me of being an utter kill joy, but if you have ever had to bring one of these stuffed animals into your life for the weekend, you will soon realise that is actually just a whole load more work for Mum to do. Basically what you do is to keep a diary of all the things that Barry did over the weekend with your family and take photos. Then the child has to write down the events as a daily diary in Barry’s book. I do believe that it’s a secret conspiracy for the school to spy into your home and see what type of parents you are! Although I have to admit that it is quite interesting to see what every one else’s kids are up to! I always feel like I need to be naughty and make up a load of stuff up like “Saturday and we went to visit all the pubs in Soho and Mammy got really drunk. Here is a picture of her throwing up on the train, and on Sunday we went out for a day trip. Here is Barry visiting Daddy in prison.”

Anyway I think it that all I really have to do is take a few pics – ok so that’s ok no problem, but it’s just printing them out and then getting your child to write about it. It really feels like an extra load of homework that you have to bribe your kids to do on top of the main homework that has been set. Anyway, it just leads to more moaning in my house and as you have to do the stuff first before you can write about it and by then everyone is knackered. The writing it down in the usually a Sunday night scramble that I could really do without. See, I told you I was a kill joy.

In all honesty it wasn’t that bad in the end, we took Barry and the kids to BURYfields, which was super compact festival packed into a small space but had such a great festival vibe it was cool. We saw some cool bands that I had never heard of, the FOXTALES, electric guitars and pysch-folk, THE LOTTERY WINNERS who that had me in stitches as did TWO WAYS HOME and SKINNY LISTER who blew me away with their energy and shanty band antics on stage – well worth a google. They even handed out a flagon of grog into the audience to pass round – which was as original as they come.

Barry got his own wrist band which was a bit of a result (and very sweet of the staff to humour us) and I remembered to take a few pictures and be careful we didn’t loose him, Barry that is not Fred. So job done. Saturday done! (BIG TICK)

We did actually forget to take Barry on the Sunday though when we packed the car to the brim with kids and clothes and cameras and took off for what turned out to be a two hour drive to Balham. Not leaving enough time to negotiate the London traffic was not a smart idea and thinking that we could squeeze in swimming before hand too was an Emma ( I can do it all ) special, I’ll never learn. We turned up at the Big Fish Little Fish event with 20 minutes to set up and so started the whole affair in a it of a panic. Believe me Barry was the furthest thing from my mind.

We needn’t to have worried though as the two and a half our kids rave went like a dream. Simon was mobbed with the Outer space photography booth that we designed for Big Fish, my kids handed out glow sticks and donned tattoos to every limb that passed their way and everyone had a great time. We wrote in the diary that Barry spent all day in bed recovering because he was tired out from partying hard with the bands the night before! Rock’n Roll !

And so we leaf from one type of fair to another as the first weekend of July we set up our trade fair stand in Solihull. It was the first time that we had done the INDX fair so we decided to launch our new Originals name with a bang and brought along an Elvis impersonator.

As you may well know one of our best selling baby garments is the little Elvis suits and so it we wanted to advertise it ROCKABYE style. So Elvis rocked up and rocked out a couple of songs and although we had to keep it short as it was trade fair and people were there to work (It was Elvis’s shortest ever gig) We had loads of people happy to be entertained for ten minutes while Elvis roared our a few favourites and brought a twinkle to the day.

Naturally I got in on the act and struck a pose or two with the King. It was funny way to launch our new collection of the Black and Gold BLING range, and the new SS17 which will be revealed next year. So if you have a shop to website and would like to know more about the new collections feel free to drop us alone and we can fill you in. I will share the pictures with this post but it really got us some attention. We also had a lovely little competition to win tickets to see BEN PORTSMOUTH the UK’s best ELvis Impersonator. He is playing at the Barclay card arena on the 3rd September and it is sure to be amazing, one of our lucky customers will be winning two tickets soon.

We also met the Hayley and Callum ay INDX who introduced us to the coolest ruck sacks that I have seen in ages, made by the German company their reps in the UK are WilliamTurner . We were lucky enough to product test and Fred my seven year old thinks his red dragon bag is awesome. Not only is it super ergonomically designed, it has all the German engineering of a mountaineers back pack. It had hidden pockets and the animal’s little arms can velcro into several places to make a peeka boo too– a brilliant piece of playfulness in design that gets the big thumbs up from us both.

So finally I have to try and sell you some of our fab clothes – as much as I love to write, I would swear a lot more if this wasn’t my kids brand blog! So I will remind that our Cool kids clothes sale is now on.
I’m not sure if you have seen it yet but our very first advert was sent out last month which we are really pleased with. It’s an in house production, ( which means it was shot and edited on my phone!) and happened completely by chance when we’re on a beach in Dorset last Summer.

We were camping and as usual it rained most of the time! But we did get one day on the beach where the kids went wild. There is something about sand and kids that is always fascinating to observe. It’s the land equivalent of being in the swimming pool – kids just seem to love it.
At some point in the day after swimming in the bloody freezing waters of the English Channel, eating a sandy sandwich – the true meaning of the snack is realised, we decide to bury Scarlet in the sand (as you do). Then using the huge bucket that we always take to build humungous sand castles we suddenly had an idea to make a video.

It took ten minutes and Fred’s laugh just cracks me up all the time. If you get to see the outtakes they are hilarious. I didn’t realize that we were actually on a nudist beach and if you look closely … well. Let’s just say thank goodness that we had a big bucket to hide things that might not be deemed suitable for a kids and baby company!

Well that’s it from me for now all I can say is have a good summer with your kids, remember to take time in your diary to do nothing, it really is the best way to spend a weekend. Maybe even better than hanging out with the guy in the big white suit, well just about.